MIGHTY TREBLE FOR 40 POINTS PROFIT AND FIVE OUT OF SIX: But for a bump for his nap on Monday, knocking out one of his trio, Daqman would have scored an unbeaten six hit this week. As it was, he followed Monday’s pair with three out of three yesterday for 40 points profit, this time his nap getting the rub of the green with a neck verdict at Catterick:
TUESDAY: profit 40 points
WON 11-10 MIGHTY SPIRIT (nap)
WON 5-1 EVA’S OSKAR
WON 11-8 GRAZEON BOY
MONDAY: profit 14.20 points
WON 13-8 PIECE OF HISTORY
WON 11-8 SOLDIERS MINUTE
SHOCK REPORT ON THE COUNTDOWN TO THE BREEDERS CUP: You need a world-class tipster for the world occasions, and Daqman will be checking out the form for an international long weekend with the Breeders Cup at Santa Anita on Friday and Saturday and the Melbourne Cup at Flemington next Tuesday. He starts with a shock report on the American scene.
AMERICAN RACING ON THE BRINK
🇺🇸 This week’s Breeders Cup gambles with the future of American racing. It could help heal the sport or forever haunt the famous hall-of-fame nation of Secretariat and Sea Biscuit.
The $28million world championship with its Friday fanfare launch of cheerleaders and champions is staged on a knife edge after 35 equine deaths on the Santa Anita track in 10 months, and more than 60 since the start of last year.
The course was shut down for a short time in March. One bad break (and I choose that word carefully) and that could be the end of the track and even the shut-down of the entire sport in the US.
My contact in America, journalist Stacy Stark, who was a winning trainer as a licence holder in New York state, told me: ‘No one could figure it out entirely and we are awaiting a California Horse Race Board report.
‘I’ve watched horse racing here for 40 years and the only change I see is the greater power of drugs and their insidious effect on the breed.’
She accepted that ‘patched up horses’ on anti-inflammatory drugs were partly to blame for the high mortality rate, though ‘around 20 of the deaths were in a three-month period of unseasonal weather, and the death rate did slow down when the weather normalised.’
But breeding was part of the ‘combination of factors’. The home of the modern English thoroughbred via the mighty Native Dancer line had ‘gone backwards.’ The horses of one top trainer have been banned from taking part this weekend.
The ‘Santa Anita question’ has motivated calls for the sport to be closed down, and California alone has faced a petition of threequarters of a million signatures.
There were also demands for the Breeders Cup venue – it’s been held at Santa Anita nine times before – to be switched.
But the man responsible for Europe’s largest contingent of runners – Aidan O’Brien, of course – says: ‘They have the track the best they can possibly have it now.’
And U.S. ace Bob Baffert, who has saddled 15 Breeders Cup winners, claims: ‘We have made changes. We shall get the best out of this thing on Saturday; don’t worry about that. It’s been a wake-up call for racing’.
Well, wake-up calls are usually produced by alarms, and the alarm has been ringing for so many months now that there is surely no time left.
Those changes must be seen to bring an inspired Breeders Cup worthy of the world stage and with it a comforting reprieve. One piece of bad luck and American racing could die.
SCARDURA CAN HOLD NICHOLLS AT BAY
2.30 Taunton Neil Mulholland seems to have turned the corner in the last two or three days with form figures of 3312 and Scardura is the only ride of the afternoon for Sam Twiston-Davies.
Scardura, whose dam was a half-sister to Hurricane Fly, ran well in a solid maiden hurdle at the Galway festival before moving to his new Bath stables from Andrew Slattery.
Today’s principal opponent, Bathsheba Bay, a Flat winner for Richard Hannon, has the entire Paul Nicholls booster kit today, less than a fortnight after his modest debut at Wincanton.
Two wind ops could have transformed him but the message from additional tongue tie and first-time cheekpieces says that it’s all either desperate or speculative, not words to use about an even-money favourite when you can get 3.85 Scardura.
2.40 Fakenham Dan Skelton is a rare visitor to Fakenham, and unlikely to go home empty-handed. He can improve his strike rate there to 83% (that would be five out of six) through Nube Negra.
The 137 hurdler who ran for the Scottish championship (fifth) was immediately given 142 over fences when too strong at Warwick for an odds-on shot who had been a 151 hurdler.
This is impressive stuff and he is likely to be too good at this stage for the other hurdles winners here who have been absent between 62 and 256 days.
7.10 Kempton Placed up to two grades higher at Goodwood and a runner in the Cesarewitch, Seinesational returns to Kempton with Jason Watson back in the saddle.
Seinsesational’s success in this race last year as a three-year-old is among his wins for Watson, whose form figures on the horse are 14110.
Casa Comigo’s hat-trick in the sixth grade has cost him a stone rise and he may be outclassed, but Astromachia, a winner over tonight’s CD, has been gelded and had a wind op. Could improve after a run back over shorter.
The BETDAQ offers give us 7.6 Seinesational with the option of a saver on Astromachia at 2.7, Casa Comigo holding up their prices.
DAQMAN’S BETS
2.30 Taunton (win 12)
BET 4.25pts win SCARDURA
2.40 Fakenham (supernap)
BET 20pts win NUBE NEGRA
7.10 Kempton (win 20, win 10)
BET 3pts win SEINESATIONAL
BET 5.75pts win ASTROMACHIA
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